Chapter 18 #3
“Did you take nothing away from our conversation last time we talked about this? You were supposed to let him look so he could feel all that regret about leaving. You weren’t supposed to offer yourself up to him!
” She doesn’t sound mad or judgmental, just like she’s trying to understand where my head was in that moment.
“And he was the one who stopped it from happening?”
“I am such a mess, Petra,” I say as I thread my fingers together and twist them around each other. “In that moment, I was just thinking that I needed to get him out of my system. Plus, it’s been a really long dry spell.”
“But Marco was in Levi. Did you . . .” Her mouth drops open as her eyes go wide. “Did you not sleep with him when you saw him there? Is that why you were so ready to get down with Nate?”
“So here’s the thing,” I say, and take a deep breath.
I’ve never said this to another living soul.
“Marco and I aren’t really dating. It’s like .
. . we’re just . . . it’s just convenient to pretend that we are.
” I tell her enough that she can understand my motivations for agreeing to this fake relationship, without giving her any details about Marco’s reasons.
“Is this like one of those fake relationship or marriage of convenience romance books that Sierra’s always reading?” She is forever teasing Sierra about her love of romance novels, which Petra insists are pure fantasy.
“Except I think in those books the fake relationship always turns real, and that’s the opposite of what’s happening here.
Anyway, I just need you to know that I’m not cheating on Marco.
He knows almost everything that’s happened with Nate since he’s been back.
Sometimes . . .” I pause. “Sometimes it even seems like he wants me to get back together with Nate.”
“What?” Petra squeals. “I thought they hated each other!”
“I mean, Nate hates Marco,” I say as I pull a blanket over me.
“But not because he thinks Marco’s a bad person, he just has always been jealous of our friendship and now that he thinks we’re dating .
. .” I trail off because I realize I don’t really know how Nate feels about Marco.
“But Marco doesn’t hate Nate. He just likes to give Nate shit because it’s so easy where I’m concerned. ”
“Because after all this time Nate’s still in love with you,” Petra clarifies and I can feel the heat creeping into my cheeks. “Oh my God, he is, isn’t he? Has he said that?”
My cheeks are practically fuchsia at this point, so much so that I almost turn the video off on our call. Instead I reach over to my coffee table and grab the remote for the fireplace, turning it on and hoping it helps take the chill out of my space.
“Do you feel the same way?” she asks, her voice rising like a tea kettle.
“I don’t think I could ever trust him enough to feel that way about him again.” I tell her about Blackstone and the NDA.
“Can you really hold that against him, though? I mean, legally he can’t tell you.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like that he’s keeping this big secret from me. Secrets were what almost ruined our relationship when we were teenagers, and we promised each other complete and total honesty after that.”
“So you’re telling me you never kept secrets from him?”
I think about the secret I just revealed to him last night.
At first it just felt like I’d be jinxing my chances of winning if I told him, and I wanted that crystal globe so bad.
After that, it would have just been pathetic to tell anyone I had been planning to retire for my boyfriend who left me.
Maybe things would have been different if I’d have told him up front?
“Hmm,” Petra says, eyes crinkling as she analyzes my face, which seems to be giving her all the details that my silence is not. “Like I thought. You had your secrets too.”
“The thing is,” I say, working this momentous conclusion out for myself for the first time, “if I’d told him my secret, things might have turned out very differently.”
Her eyebrows are so high they look like they’re launching off her forehead.
“Jackson, have you ever thought that maybe your dad was right?” Normally I love Petra’s straight-shooting approach, but this question is like a shot to the stomach.
“I mean, maybe you guys wouldn’t have made it if he’d stayed back then.
Maybe he really did need to leave in order to find himself.
I mean, you did kind of . . . well, he sort of .
. .” She bites her lower lip like she doesn’t want to say what she’s about to say.
“Just spit it out, Petra.”
“I mean, it was obvious who wore the pants in your relationship, and I imagine it must have been hard for him to always be in your shadow.”
I know she’s not wrong, but it’s hard to hear it anyway.
“Yeah,” I say sadly, “maybe. But now the reality is that he’s back, and he’s still the Nate I always loved, just a bit more mature and a lot more sexy.
And he’s finding his footing on the National Ski Team right as I’m about to walk away from this life.
Even if the Danforth thing doesn’t work out, I’m still hoping to move home after this season. And he’ll be traveling and competing.”
Petra sighs. “Maybe you should talk to him about this? If he’s told you he’s still in love with you, if he’s laid it all out like that, then doesn’t he at least deserve to know what you’re thinking? And to know that you’re leaving?”
“What if he tells someone and I get fired? I can’t take that risk. I haven’t even told Sierra for that reason! Being a physical therapist for this team is the best leverage I have for finding a new job.” If I get fired, it will ruin everything.
“I’m just saying, you can’t be mad that he won’t tell you about Blackstone after signing an NDA if you’re keeping things from him that you don’t legally need to keep a secret.”
Touché.
“Since he’s been back, I’ve never let myself envision a situation where Nate and I have a future together. I mean, getting naked with him, sure. But I haven’t considered anything long-term.”
“Even though you know that’s where his mind is at?” she asks and I nod. “I mean, the guy thinks you’re with someone else and he still tells you how he feels and still says he’s waiting for you. Do you have any idea how ballsy that is? Jackson, you need to be honest with him.”
“I can’t talk to Nate about any of this until I’ve talked to Marco. I’ll see him in a couple days when we get to Italy.”
“There’s this amazing newfangled way to talk to people even when they’re far away,” Petra says and rolls her eyes as she gets up off her couch and walks to her kitchen with her empty wineglass. “Why don’t you just call him?”
“This really feels like it should be an in-person conversation.” Like how he waited to tell me he was retiring until we were together in Levi. “Plus, I need time to think about what I want to say. I’m still not sure where I want this to go with Nate.”
“I’m just saying, you could call Marco right now and be fucking Nate tonight. You know that, right?”
“Wow, Petra, you’re such a romantic.”
“Honey, you clearly need sex and you clearly want it to happen with Nate. Why put up all these artificial boundaries and these walls?”
“There’s nothing artificial about how completely he destroyed my heart.
Pardon me if I’m being cautious because I don’t want to ever feel like that again.
” The pain of the past washes over me at inconvenient times, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever truly be over it.
Even now that I know he didn’t leave me in the way I thought he did, it still hurts.
“I know he hurt you,” she says as she props her phone up on the countertop and pours herself another glass of wine.
“But you also know that at the time, between what your dad said to him and thinking you had feelings for Marco, he had reasons that at least check out—if not make the whole thing understandable.” She raises her eyebrows, tilts her wineglass toward me in a mock salute, and takes a sip of her drink.
“Has anyone ever hurt you like that, Petra? Ever made you feel absolutely worthless and unlovable, and utterly alone?” She can’t understand how I’m feeling if she hasn’t experienced something like it—empathy only goes so far.
A look passes over her face that I can’t quite place. “As if.” She rolls her eyes and takes another sip of wine. “So maybe you can recognize that this is more about your fear than about what actually happened, no?”
“In theory, yes, I’m starting to see that. But the reality is that I’ve lived with this hurt and pain for five years, and that’s hard to let go of.”
“You can keep holding onto that,” she says, “but in the end it may hurt you more than him.”
Her words remind me of Ms. Juarez’s sage advice. She told me I was much too young to be this bitter. And I’m being given a second chance here, so maybe I would be a fool to give that up.
“Thanks for the therapy, Petra. Helpful as always.” I blow her a kiss.
“Anytime you need some tough love, you know I’m here for you.”
“Please don’t tell anyone what I told you about Marco, not even Sierra or Lauren. That has to stay secret for now.”
“Therapy is always confidential.”